How to Be a Marketer with an Investor Mindset with Cannabis eCommerce Expert Mike Bibbey

Key Insights

• The investor mindset for cannabis marketing treats every dollar of ad spend as a capital allocation decision that should have a forecasted return - rather than a cost center expense - which means cannabis marketers need to be able to show financial stakeholders how a specific budget increase translates into a specific revenue increase, using historical ROAS data from paid search, programmatic, SEO, SMS, and email as the foundation for that forecast.
• When economic conditions force cannabis marketing budget cuts, the strategic response is not proportional reduction across all channels but rapid reallocation toward the highest-returning channels - as demonstrated at Ethos Cannabis in 2020, when outdoor and event spend became immediately ineffective and the decision to double down on digital instead produced accelerated business growth.
• Cannabis brands at scale reach a point of diminishing returns on acquisition - where each additional dollar of new customer spend produces less revenue than the dollar before it - which is when the balance should shift toward retention and reactivation, since retaining or winning back existing customers typically costs significantly less than acquiring new ones.
• The most effective way for a cannabis marketing team to secure budget increases from financial leadership is to present forecasted revenue scenarios by investment level - showing what performance-focused versus brand-awareness-focused campaigns each produce, and quantifying the expected revenue lift from a specific budget increase - rather than making qualitative arguments about the value of marketing.
• Budget flexibility and the ability to reallocate spend across channels in real time is a structural competitive advantage for cannabis brands: operators that can quickly shift budget from underperforming placements to higher-return channels during a campaign flight outperform those locked into rigid channel allocations regardless of in-market conditions.

Webinar Highlights

00:00 – What It Means to Be a Marketer With an Investor Mindset

Host Guillermo Bravo and guest Mike Bibby open with the framing that defines the entire conversation: cannabis marketers who think like investors - treating ad spend as capital with an expected return rather than overhead with an expected expense - operate at a fundamentally different level than those who manage marketing as a budget category. Mike brings over 15 years of digital marketing and demand generation experience, including his time as VP of Marketing at Ethos Cannabis, to illustrate what this mindset looks like in practice.

06:00 – How Ethos Cannabis Navigated Budget Reallocation in 2020

The webinar uses Ethos Cannabis's 2020 experience as a concrete case study in investor-mindset marketing. When the pandemic eliminated the value of outdoor advertising and event sponsorships overnight, the team did not spread cuts evenly - they redirected those budgets aggressively into digital channels that reached consumers where they were: shopping from home on phones and computers. The decision to concentrate spend rather than reduce it produced rapid business growth at a time when many competitors were retreating.

12:00 – Building Revenue Forecasts That Win Budget Approvals

Mike explains the forecasting approach that has driven budget approval conversations throughout his career. Using historical ROAS data from paid search, SEO, programmatic, SMS, and email, his team built revenue models that could show financial leadership exactly what a budget increase from $50,000 to $100,000 would produce in projected revenue - and, critically, hit those forecasts consistently. This combination of clear modeling and proven accuracy is what earns cannabis marketing teams the financial credibility to secure larger investments.

18:00 – Performance vs. Brand Awareness: Presenting Both Scenarios

The conversation covers how Mike structures budget proposals around two distinct investment approaches: a performance-based campaign focused on driving immediate revenue, and a brand awareness-first approach with longer-horizon returns. Presenting both scenarios with their respective ROAS projections gives financial stakeholders the information they need to make a strategic choice - and positions the marketing team as a strategic advisor rather than a cost requester.

24:00 – Acquisition vs. Retention: When to Shift the Balance

The webinar addresses the scaling challenge that most growing cannabis brands eventually face: diminishing returns on customer acquisition. As a cannabis brand matures and the easiest new customer acquisition opportunities are captured, each additional acquisition dollar produces less revenue. Mike discusses how to recognize when the acquisition curve is plateauing and how to make the case internally for shifting investment toward retention and reactivation - which consistently delivers a lower cost per sale at scale than continued acquisition-first spending.

30:00 – Budget Flexibility as a Competitive Advantage

The closing discussion frames the ability to reallocate marketing budget quickly - across channels and within an active campaign - as a structural competitive advantage. Cannabis operators that maintain close communication between marketing and finance, and that have the operational flexibility to move spend toward what is working and away from what is not, consistently outperform those operating under rigid channel allocations. The investor mindset, applied at this level, treats every marketing dollar as actively managed rather than passively deployed.

Frequently Asked Questions

[ {What does it mean to be a marketer with an investor mindset in cannabis?}

A cannabis marketer with an investor mindset treats every dollar of ad spend as a capital allocation decision with a forecasted return - not an expense category to be managed against a fixed budget. In practice, this means tracking ROAS by channel, building revenue forecasts from that data, presenting financial stakeholders with quantified projections rather than qualitative arguments, and actively reallocating budget toward the highest-returning channels as market conditions change. It is the approach that turns a marketing team from a cost center into a revenue driver.

{How should cannabis brands manage marketing budgets during economic downturns?}

Rather than applying proportional cuts across all channels, cannabis brands in economic downturns should identify which channels have lost effectiveness due to changed consumer behavior - outdoor advertising and events, for example, during the pandemic - and rapidly reallocate those budgets toward channels that are reaching consumers where they actually are. The brands that concentrated spend rather than reduced it during 2020 emerged from the downturn with stronger digital performance and competitive position than those that cut evenly.

{How do cannabis marketing teams build credibility with financial leadership?}

Cannabis marketing teams build credibility with financial leadership by replacing qualitative arguments with quantified revenue forecasts - modeling what a specific budget investment will produce in revenue based on historical ROAS data from paid search, SEO, programmatic, SMS, and email. Presenting this data as a range of investment scenarios (performance-focused vs. brand-awareness-focused) with projected revenue outcomes at each level, and then consistently hitting those forecasts, is what earns marketing teams the trust and budget authority to operate as true strategic partners.

{When should cannabis brands shift focus from acquisition to retention?}

Cannabis brands should begin shifting the balance from acquisition to retention when acquisition ROAS starts showing diminishing returns - when each additional dollar of new customer spend produces meaningfully less revenue than the prior dollar. At this stage, retaining and reactivating existing customers typically costs significantly less per sale than continuing to pursue new ones. The right balance between acquisition and retention investment depends on business maturity, market size, and the financial ratios that make each approach profitable at a specific scale.

{What ROAS benchmarks should cannabis brands use for marketing forecasts?}

ROAS benchmarks vary significantly by channel, market, and cannabis category. The most reliable approach is to build forecasts from actual historical data across each channel a brand is actively running - paid search, programmatic, SEO-driven revenue, email, and SMS - rather than industry averages. Using channel-specific ROAS data to model revenue at different budget levels creates defensible, credible forecasts that financial stakeholders can evaluate, and establishes a performance standard the marketing team can be held accountable to. ]